I was thinking just now, ruminating bitter like good ol' two buck Chuck Bukowski, all the things that used to matter so much more. Though I was aware I was growing and changing throughout the college years, some ideas remained steadfast in my mind and were thought "important" for the long run for whatever stupid reasons. Like, That’s it, I’m done growing, and this is how I’ll always be. Shit. I don't know about this.
The first being the Liza, Lisa, Elizabeth or whatever, the girl who was supposed to be my roommate first term freshman year of college. Roommates are a big deal when you’re going off to college, living out of the house for the first time and with some strange person who will probably suck. I was nervous as hell as to who I’d end up getting stuck with. The girl next to me got a girl who was really nice other than the fact that she had really snotty friends and a habit of frequently locking her out of the room to have sex. The guy next to me ended up with an emotionally unstable guy who had a drug-induced meltdown sophomore year. The girl across the hall had drawn a snotty private arts high school grad (rejected from Cooper Union, presumably) who wore avant garde jumpsuits and considered herself too good for everything. The girl I had was from Idaho and had a stupid email address -- something like "starfaerie1987", and the campus student life kept giving me different variants of what her name was. I got there a bit earlier and unpacked my side of the room. Waited a day, then another day and she still didn't show up. I was getting kind of worried. More time to come up with ideas about just how freaky she actually was going to turn out. My house chair (a resident adviser, basically) told me he'd put her with me because I on my housing application I’d said that I'm atheist and she described herself as a militant atheist intolerant of all religious scum and mindless sheep and well, sorry. But she didn't show up. I was relieved because I had been paranoid about sharing close quarters with a total stranger, never having any alone time, and well, she sounded kind of nuts anyway and there were more than enough of those people around on campus anyway. Plus, I was worried that she would judge me. It was fun, though, from time to time trying to picture what she would have been like. Liza, I can’t remember what her last name was anymore. Wakefield? No, that's not it, that's the boring twin from Sweet Valley Twins. (Perhaps a more relevant topic of discussion.) Maybe she was the boring twin, too? Now the whole Lisa thing, the way I first thought about it, it's just a mildly funny story amongst college friends who understand what the experience of a roommate at that place in particular is like, probably not relevant to anyone else, filler for conversation gaps if anyone mentions college roommate stories, not a topic worthy of discussion to bring up amongst people who weren't there ‘cause that part of our lives is over. God that sounds depressing, putting it like that, but it's more of a relief than anything.
Mostly I wasn't thinking too much about Eliza or whatever. Nah, my thoughts quickly jumped over to another college thing. Yeah, I still have a weird crush on him, but not head over heels infatuation like before. A scene and conversation I've revisted a few times since: This musician I'd admired from afar for years and I walking through the snow in December. Discussing realistic prospects of teaching on campus, places to go, friends, fears. It was wild to talk with someone like that. "Are you sure we haven't met before?" I've heard that one a few times. I must have doppelgangers all over the country. He was surprisingly candid in revealing his bitterness towards an old friend and musical collaborator for abandoning his roots. He pointed to the house next to mine on the corner of First Street and said, "A few years back, him and his band were up playing a show, it was supposed to happen in the student center but the power went out or something, and anyway, they ended up playing an acoustic set in the living room of that house. It was like old times. It was great." I feel like, in some ways, I've abandoned him, too. I deleted all of my albums by that band a few days ago, the back-in-the-day jangly lo-fi folk ones. I still own the physical copies, but I don’t have a stereo so most likely they'll just collect dust. What of the sweet wistful pop of the first few albums, supplanted in favor of...loud dance music and a flamboyant stage persona? I asked him, "Hey, what's up with that anyway? The dance music...and exposing himself on stage. Didn’t see that coming." He was all, "Me neither. But he'd always wanted to be more successful, you know. Repressed upbringing, and now he's got a family, a house, gotta make money somehow. I guess this is what he’d always wanted to do." He didn't sound bitter about that, though, I don't mean to cast him as a spiteful sort of person, far from it. How strange, how strange, how things between friends change. You know, when a friend out of nowhere pulls a total 180 and finally has the balls to do what they really wanted to do after all these years of knowing them. I ended up going the way of electronic hi-fi music, too.
The other thing I thought of was the part in Mount Analogue where the characters have to cast aside their old world identities (artist, inventor, etc) as they are no longer relevant guises to hide their true selves behind before they begin their goal of ascending the mystical mountain. What identity do I have to cast aside? Soon, it will be some sort of temporary occupation, most recently it's student, on campus psych major with obscure musical taste and riot grrrl dresses and craft beer and gin only, see friends bands not stupid parties. Now it's nothing but that old negative underachieving self-talk "unemployed", which isn't even an identity really as it's a negative one characterized by the absence of something, something I didn't really choose to take on myself.
Liza, Elizabeth, whoever, I ended up meeting her later. She showed up two and a half years late, with jangling facial piercings and bracelets, granny glasses, expensive bohemian wardrobe and Mary-Kate Olsen-inspired hair, and a pack a day Benson and Hedges habit. I didn't actually introduce myself, just observed like a naturalist does with an unfamiliar, possibly invasive species appearing in a new habitat. I found out who she was when another friend of mine was complaining about her, "You know, that girl with like, 4 lip piercings who reeks of smoke, Benson and Hedges – disgusting, and is always fucking asleep during class -- I think her name is Lisa or Liza ____". I made the connection and I was impressed by whatever transformation had undergone. I like to think that she spent those two and a half years in preparation, reinventing herself from "starfaerie1987" for the all important identity and image parade that is college, or more likely adolescence in general, particularly amongst those of creative leanings. Anyway, she fucked one of my friends, slept through class a lot, smoked a lot, and left halfway through the term. I guess that goes back to my original point. How I used to be. What a relief it is, that I have in fact changed, though I still tend to drag the past around with me like a ball and chain.
